Tamed Monster - Chapter 15

Finally softening her expression, she spoke gently to her son.

“Lancart, my son. I heard you were in the study, but that wasn’t the case, was it?”

While the Duchess was frolicking like colts in a flower field with the Crown Prince, he had indeed been in the study. Apparently, a servant mistakenly reported this to Rossa.

Kuinan looked down at the woman—who hadn’t recognized he was the fake Lancart yet gave him a friendly look—with a smirk and said,

“Come to think of it, isn’t it me who owns this place?”

No, there was no argument. He was the true master of this castle.

Rossa was merely a guest. She had no assigned quarters, and was only someone who had her own servants renovate an extra reception room where she sometimes stayed. Since she was the Emperor’s concubine, she ought to consider a corner of an annex palace her home.

“Uh, huh?”

“That’s what I mean by why you’re so brazen in this house, Mother. I never liked you from the start. And why, as a guest, do you keep grabbing other people’s wives like you’re catching rats?”

With Sylvia behind him, Lancart unleashed the grievances he had silently harbored about his light encounters with Rossa.

To an outsider, it might have looked like he was protecting Sylvia, but in truth, he was just holding onto Rossa like a pest to continue this intriguing conversation with Sylvia.

Rossa, hearing such rude words from her son for the first time, paled visibly. Kuinan, pleased by that exact shade of palish face, continued his harsh tirade.

Even Sylvia, who secretly cheered for her husband, hurriedly tried to stop him. Rossa’s limbs trembled uncontrollably, though her eyes were wide open.

“Got it by now?”

“Duke…!”

“Try storming into my room without permission again. I’ll burn Mother’s chambers to the ground.”

Out of respect, he still called her “Mother.” He didn’t want to make an enemy of this woman and create unexpected trouble. Unaware that the monster was being gentle with her, Rossa glared wide-eyed, shocked by her son’s outrageous words.

“You…”

Though she was his mother, Rossa had no standing to oppose Lancart—especially within the Duke’s castle. She could say no more and huffed in frustration.

“Finished talking, Mother?”

Grabbing his wife’s wrist from beside him, Lancart pulled her inside, glancing at the side towards Rossa.

The servant who had followed Rossa quietly closed the door, sensing Lancart’s subtle gesture to do so. As soon as the door shut, Rossa’s sharp voice scolding the servant echoed through the room, but Lancart paid it no mind and helped his wife sit down on the sofa.

“Tell me more. What else did I say to you?”

Sylvia swallowed hard as she met her husband’s curious blue eyes.

Her heart pounded. Somehow, this man felt different from the husband she once knew.

He was frustratingly innocent and naive, a mischievous rogue with no manners, yet also caring and tender. Over the four years they had been together, a feeling she had never experienced before was starting to bloom.

“We haven’t talked much before… but I’ll think carefully now about what else you said.”

Sylvia found her husband unusually handsome today, the same man who stood between her and Rossa and defended her, and swallowed nervously.

* * *

A dark, ominous shape swiftly crossed the sky.

Caw—!

Resembling a crow, it scanned the ground below with glowing red eyes. When it let out a sharp cry mimicking a crow’s call, nearby birds scattered in panic. After hours of wandering, it finally found the right direction and flapped its black wings toward the Duke’s castle.

Hector.

The close friend of Kuinan, who was disguising himself as a fake Lancart. A centuries-old monster and master of disguise, had transformed part of his right arm into a crow and was infiltrating human territory.

—Tap.

Late at night, on the second night that fake Lancart and Sylvia shared a bed, Hector dug his claws into a corner of the mansion’s roof and pecked at a window with his beak.

Irritated by the persistent pecking, Lancart woke after a few minutes, muttering curses as he slammed open the balcony door.

“What is it?”

Despite the unexpected monster’s appearance, Lancart’s reaction was calm.

Because he himself had summoned Hector. Yet, frowning with annoyance at being disturbed, Hector glared at him with the crow’s eyes as if utterly exasperated.

[You’re the one who called me. Do you want to die?]

“…Oh, right.”

[How’s it going? Nobody’s suspicious, right?]

Hector immediately began his interrogation. Lancart glanced at Sylvia, sound asleep inside the room, then firmly closed the door between the balcony and the chamber.